Well, as James Dean Bradfield has said, 'We only want to get drunk' was in fact meant to be taken at least partially literally.

Here's James Dean Bradfield on the subject:

'At the Nynex when crowds of lads were singing, 'We only wanna get drunk!', I think there was a big mistake made there, this idea of (mimsy condescension) 'Oh God, what are Nicky and James thinking about at this moment, they must be cringeing at that lot there...'. And part of that lyric has no irony in it at all. For a start, as a person, I've been in many a situation where I know not what to say but I know what to do, where I'm not articulate enough to make myself understood and, yeah, sometimes I do just wanna f*cking get drunk, definitely and utterly, sometimes the most base reaction is the only one I've got. And those were the working-class considerations in the song'.

That was one aspect of the MSP fcommunity that I never did like: the snobbery and exclusionary tendencies of a certain subset of their fans.

This idea that if you were wearing a Ben Sherman shirt, or a tracksuit, or liked beer, and were at a Manics gig singing along to 'We only wanna get drunk!' with gusto, then you were obviously some kind of meat head who didn't get it and shouldn't be there.

It was pure prejudice, really. Like you can't dress in casual, working-class street fashions and be sensitive and intelligent.